William Golding

"The War taught us not fighting, politics or the follies of nationalism, but about the given nature of man."

Birthplace

Cornwall, England

Education

Brasenose College, Oxford; abandoned science for English literature, specialising in Old English.

Other jobs

English teacher; served in the Royal Navy during the second world war, taking part in the Normandy invasion. He also taught in Greece.

Did you know?

Lord of the Flies was turned down by 21 publishers.

Critical verdict

Golding began writing at seven and published his first volume of poetry before completing his BA. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 (to some surprise - the smart money had been on Graham Greene) "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today".

Recommended works

Rites of Passage replays Golding's concern with the brutality of man as nineteenth-century rationalist pastiche, the facade of calm highlighting the forces of chaos.

Influences

As a child, he was gripped by adventure tales of man abandoned in nature, such as Coral Island (Robert Ballantyne), of which Lord of the Flies is a dark inversion. After the first world war - when, as Golding saw it, the world lost any remaining innocence - for 15 years "I read nothing but classical Greek, not because it was the snobbish thing to do or even the most enjoyable, but because this is where the meat is." The influence of Greek tragedy is evident in all his books; he also greatly admired Graham Greene.